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Thursday, February 19, 2009

10 Minute Makeover

The Nester recently did a 4 week series called "10 Minutes to a Room You'll Love." She gave simple and practical advice for making a room prettier and more functional. Now that the series is over, she is having a linking party so that we can all share the 10 minute makeovers we did in our homes. Below are the changes I made in our house this week.

This is our dining area before. We live in a small apartment, and have virtually no office space. My husband is a seminary student, and living in a small apartment makes studying difficult and messy! Will doesn't have an office or spare corner of the apartment for studying and doing homework, so our kitchen table doubles as his study space. We are only a family of three, and we really don't need all of the table space for meals. We did want the dining area to look nice, but we didn't have a good place to keep books, notebooks, pens, Bibles, Hebrew cards, etc. They always stayed piled up on the table. And what is that in the corner???

Yep, it's a box of food. We ran out of food storage room in our kitchen. This box stayed in the corner. It was practical for us, but unsightly! The solution: I removed the box of food, and replaced it with a small bookshelf.

This bookshelf now holds all of Will's notebooks, pens, current textbooks, Bibles, and Hebrew cards. I even had room on the top for some of our favorite pictures and a fake candle (real candles are banned in our apartment complex).

That cleared off the table very nicely. But what did I do with the box of food? Look closely!

There it is! I just pushed it under the table. We don't use that side of the table, so it won't be in anyone's way, and it won't be in plain sight.

This is the after shot. It's not a perfect dining area, but it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful, right?

What is perfect anyway?! I think it looks welcoming and that's what matters. My take on this whole project is to simply pay a bit more attention, something we can quickly do, to make ourselves, our families and our home more welcoming for us. Great job!

Oh, girl, this looks great!Isn't it wonderful that in just minutes time, we can have our spots look so much better...and wonderful that we have NESTER to pinch our butts and make us move faster!hugs, bj

Goodness you are popular! Holy cow! I don't think I've ever had 22 comments on a blog post! LOL. So, this post just makes me smile so much. I LOVE it. My problem would be that I would never put the books back on the shelf after I took them off to use them to study. I'm so bad at picking up!!! I'm just good a MAKING messes!I love what you did. It makes a big difference. Very clever!Love,em

Rachel-Thanks for the lovely comments on my blog! I am going to try really hard to post, by tomorrow, a tutorial of sorts on my slip cover, including better photos of the finished product. I'll let you know when it's finished. I'm so glad you were inspired! It's really easier than it looks. :)